Organic Universe

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Deception, agenda and folly drive latest Obama EPA anti-hydrocarbon rules. Are farmers next?
No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than
climate change, President Obama insisted in his 2015 State of the Union
address. So now he wants his Environmental Protection Agency to compel
drilling companies to slash methane emissions, which he says contribute
to “dangerous manmade climate change.”

His goal is steadily greater control over our lives, livelihoods,
living standards and liberties, with little or no transparency or
accountability for regulators, pseudo-scientists or activists.

However, companies already control their methane emissions, and the
supposed warming effect of this gas is wildly inflated, by as much as
100 times. Moreover, there is no evidence that we face dangerous manmade
warming or climate change, now or in the near future. What we are
really dealing with is a catechism of climate cataclysm:
near-religious zealotry by an alarmist
scientific-industrial-government-activist alliance – and EPA’s
determination to use methane’s alleged impacts on Earth’s climate to
control a highly successful fracking industry that has thus far been
largely free of federal interference, because it operates mostly on
state and private lands that are governed effectively by state and local
regulators.

Methane deceptions

Paul Driessen

First they came for the coal mining and power plant industry, and most people did not speak out
because they didn’t rely on coal, accepted Environmental Protection
Agency justifications at face value, or thought EPA’s war on coal would
benefit them.

In fact, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon gave the Sierra Club
$26 million, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave the Club $50
million, to help it wage a Beyond Coal campaign. The Sierra Club
later claimed its efforts forced 142 U.S. coal-fired power plants to
close, raising electricity rates, threatening grid reliability, and
costing thousands of jobs in dozens of states.

Mr. McClendon apparently figured eliminating coal from America’s
energy mix would improve his natural gas business. The mayor likes
renewable energy and detests fossil fuels, which he blames for climate
change that he tried to finger for the damages ‘Superstorm’ Sandy inflicted on his city.

Now the Obama EPA is coming after the natural gas industry. Hopefully
many will speak out this time, before more costly rules kill more jobs
and damage the health and welfare
of more middle class Americans. The war on coal, after all, is really a
war on fossil fuels and affordable energy, and an integral component of
President Obama’s determination to “fundamentally transform” the
United States.

Proposed EPA regulations would compel drilling and fracking companies to reduce methane (natural gas or CH4)
emissions by 40-45% by 2025, compared to 2012. Companies would have to
install technologies that monitor operations and prevent inadvertent
leaks. The rules would apply only to new or modified sites, not existing
operations. However, Big Green activist groups are already campaigning
to have EPA expand the rule to cover existing gas wells, fracking operations, gas processing facilities and pipelines.

But companies already control their emissions, to avoid polluting the
air, and because natural gas is a valuable resource that they would
much rather sell than waste. That’s why EPA data show methane emissionsfalling 17% even as gas production increased
by 37% between 1990 and 2014, and why natural gas operations employing
hydraulic fracturing reduced their methane emissions by 73% from 2011 to
2013. The rules are costly and unnecessary, and would bring few
benefits.

The Obama Administration thus justifies them by claiming they will
help prevent “dangerous manmade climate change.” Methane, EPA says, has
a warming effect 50 times greater than carbon dioxide. This assertion
is wildly inflated, by as much as a factor of 100, Dr. Fred Singer says.
Atmospheric water vapor already absorbs nearly all the infrared
radiation (heat) that methane could, and the same radiation cannot be
absorbed twice. The physics of Earth’s surface infrared emission
spectrum are also important.

More importantly, to borrow a favorite Obama phrase, let me make one
thing perfectly clear. There is no dangerous manmade climate change, now
or on the horizon. There is no evidence that methane or carbon dioxide
emissions have replaced the complex, powerful, interconnected natural
forces that have driven warming, cooling, climate and weather
fluctuations throughout Earth and human history. There is no evidence
that recent extreme weather events are more frequent or severe than over
the previous 100 years.

Indeed, planetary temperatures have not budged for more than 18
years, and we are amid the longest stretch since at least 1900 (more
than nine years) without a Category 3-5 hurricane hitting the United
States. If CO2 and CH4 are to be blamed for every temperature change or extreme weather event, then shouldn’t they also be credited for this lack of warming and deadly storms? But climate hype continues.

We are repeatedly told, “Climate change is real, and humans are
partly to blame.” The statement is utterly meaningless. Earth’s climate
fluctuates frequently, and human activities undoubtedly have some
influences, at least on local (especially urban) temperatures. The
question is, How much of an effect? Are the temperature and other effects harmful or beneficial, especially when carbon dioxide’s enormous role in improved plant growth is factored in? Would slashing U.S. CO2 and CH4 emissions mean one iota of difference, when China, India and other countries are doing nothing to reduce their emissions?

Nevertheless, the latest NASA press release asserts that 2014 was
“the hottest since the modern instrumental record began,” and again
blames mankind’s carbon dioxide emissions. This deliberately deceptive,
fear-inducing claim was quickly retracted, but not before it got
extensive front-page coverage.

Let me make another fact perfectly clear. The alleged global temperature increase was 0.02 degrees C (0.04 degrees F). It is not even measurable by our most sensitive instruments. It is one-fifth the margin of error
in these measurements. It ignores satellite data and is based on
ground-level instruments that are contaminated by urban heat and cover
less than 15% of Earth’s surface. Even NASA admitted it was only 38%
confident of being correct – and 62% certain that it was wrong. Analyses
by Dr. Tim Ball, Marc Morano, Anthony Watts and other experts provide more details eviscerating this bogus claim.

In the end, though, all these real-world facts are irrelevant. We are dealing with a catechism of climate cataclysm:
near-religious zealotry by a scientific-industrial-government-activist
alliance that has built a financial, political and regulatory empire.
They are not about to renounce any claims of climate catastrophe, no
matter how much actual evidence debunks their far-fetched computer model scenarios.

Their EPA-IPCC “science” is actively supported by most of the
“mainstream media” and by the World Bank, universities, renewable
energy companies and even some churches. They will never willingly
surrender the political influence and billions of dollars that CAGW
claims bring them. They won’t even admit that wind and solar facilities
butcher birds and bats by the millions, scar landscapes, impair human health, cannot exist without coal and natural gas, and are probably our least sustainable energy option. They want gas prices to rise again, so that heavily subsidized renewable energy is competitive once more.

Meanwhile, polls reveal that regular, hard-working, middle-income
Americans care most about terrorism, the economy, jobs, healthcare
costs, education and job opportunities after graduation; climate change
is always dead last on any list. Regular Europeans want to end the
“energy poverty” that has killed countless jobs, and each winter kills
thousands of elderly people who can no longer afford to heat their homes
properly. The world’s poorest citizens want affordable electricity,
higher living standards, and an end to the lung infections, severe
diarrhea, malaria and other diseases of poverty that kill millions of
children and parents year after year – largely because alarmists oppose
nuclear, coal and gas-fired power plants.

But federal regulators, climate chaos “ethicists” and
“progressives” who loudly profess they care deeply about the poor and
middle classes – all ignore these realities. They focus on methane,
because they view it as a clever way to inject federal oversight and
control into an energy sector that had been largely free of such
interference, because the fracking revolution has thus far taken place
mostly on state and private lands governed effectively by state and
local regulators. (Federal lands are mostly off limits.)

The proposed methane rules would generate more delays, paperwork, costs and job losses, to comply with more federal regulations
that will bring no detectable benefits – and much harm, at a time when
plunging oil and gas prices are forcing drillers to reduce operations
and lay people off.

President Obama devoted 15 lines of his 2015 State of the Union
speech to climate fables and propaganda. His goal is steadily greater
control over our lives, livelihoods, living standards and liberties,
with little or no transparency or accountability for regulators,
pseudo-scientists or activists.

It won’t be long before EPA and Big Green come for farmers and
ranchers – to curtail “climate-wrecking” methane emissions from cattle,
pig and sheep flatulence and dung, and exert greater control over
agricultural water, dust and carbon dioxide. By then, there may be no
one left to speak out.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: To save the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.

Friday, January 30, 2015

The current administration would like for you to believe that the
economy is on the mend and that we can look forward to growth in 2015.
But most economists and basically anyone with a grain of sense will tell
you otherwise.

The drop in oil prices may seem like a good thing
when it's time to gas up the SUV, but the free fall in oil prices is
actually very bad news in the long run. And when you take a look at how
the Federal Reserve has been artificially stimulating the economy with
quantitative easing and the continued printing of ever-more-worthless
dollars, it's not difficult to see that there is a huge economic bubble
being created, and it will burst sooner or later. My guess is sooner,
but maybe I'm just a pessimist -- time will tell...

Many are
predicting that 2015 will be the year the dollar collapses, and few of
us are truly ready to face what some are forecasting will be a financial
"bloodbath" or "Armageddon." Despite the Obama Administration and the
Fed's attempts to paint lipstick on a pig by cooking the books, the fact
remains that more than 100 million Americans are unemployed -- the
highest percentage since the Great Depression.

And with oil
prices expected to drop even further, more Americans can expect to lose
their jobs -- if they are lucky enough to have one in the first place.

And
let's not forget the effects of Obamacare, which is driving employers
to cut hours for their workers so that they can avoid having to meet the
ACA requirements.

In short, we are headed for an economic collapse that will make the 2008 crisis pale in comparison.

So, how to survive the coming crash?

Daisy
Luther, creator of the website offers some useful advice on how to cut
costs and prepare as much as possible for the inevitable collapse of the
dollar.

As Luther notes: "The key to economic survival
is requiring less of things that cost money." She urges readers to
realize the difference between essentials and luxuries, and get rid of
the things that aren't necessary to survival. Her list of essentials
includes:

Water

Food (and the ability to cook it)

Medicine and medical supplies

Basic hygiene supplies

Shelter (including sanitation, lights, heat)

Simple tools

Seeds

Defense items

Beyond
these basics, all else are luxuries. Luther recommends looking for ways
to cut monthly costs. Among her suggestions: moving to a smaller home,
relocating to a smaller town, getting rid of monthly car payments by
buying a cheaper used vehicle with cash, stop using credit cards, eat at
home instead of dining out, and generally becoming as frugal and
self-reliant as possible.

The more you can provide for yourself,
the better off you will be. Do whatever you can to reduce your reliance
on the power grid -- harnessing solar energy and limiting the use of
electricity to powering actual necessities is a good start.

The
more food you can grow or produce, the more money you'll save and the
healthier you'll be -- not to mention the fact that you'll be more
self-reliant when the SHTF.

It is essential to establish a mindset that will get you through any crisis. The core philosophy of prepping is to be ready before
things go sideways. Luther also urges everyone to build a "preparedness
library." If the power grid goes down, you'll need books to help you
develop and maintain survival strategies -- websites are of no use if
you can't get online.

Even if the economy
turns around (which is highly doubtful at this point), it makes sense
to be prepared for the worst. Don't wait until the proverbial wolves are
at the door -- make plans now for facing what could prove to be a very
challenging situation when the current economic bubble finally bursts.

The Republican-controlled Senate passed a bipartisan bill approving
construction of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline, prompting a
showdown with President Barack Obama, who has promised to veto the
legislation.

In a 62-36 vote,
Republicans were able to peel away nine Democrats from President
Obama’s position on the pipeline, ensuring easy passage for the
bill once it cleared a filibuster. If Obama vetoes the bill as
promised, however, supporters do not have the 67 votes needed to
override his decision.

The pipeline was first proposed in 2008 and would carry oil 1,179
miles from Canada’s tar sands to Nebraska, where it would connect
to an existing pipeline and continue traveling south.

“Constructing Keystone would pump billions into our
economy,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.),
said prior to voting. “It would support thousands of good
American jobs and as the president’s own State Department has
indicated, it would do this with minimal environmental
impact.”

The bill now moves into the reconciliation process with the House
of Representatives, which passed its own bill approving the
pipeline earlier this month.

Previously, the White House resisted attempts by Congress to
force the president to make a decision. In 2012, Obama vetoed a
proposal supporting the pipeline, but the project’s developer,
TransCanada Corp, then reapplied.

Now environmentalists are urging the president to reject it
again, as they argue it will make it easier to drill for oil in
Canada’s tar sands –a dirty process which burns a lot of energy
in itself. The State
Department is also seeking input on the project's potential
environmental fallout from the Environmental Protection Agency
and the Interior Department.

The project has also
sparked opposition from Native American tribes, particularly
those living on Nebraska land that the pipeline is expected to
run through.

Supporters of the pipeline argue that its construction will
create jobs and boost the United States' energy independence.
Construction is estimated to create thousands of jobs and
contribute a few billion dollars to America's GDP, but once it is
completed some 50 people will be required to maintain its
operation.

"The fact is, Keystone would create only 35 permanent jobs --
a drop in the bucket," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) to
the Huffington Post. "A fried chicken franchise creates about
as many jobs."

The Thursday vote ended weeks of vigorous debate, which had the
Senate up until the small hours of the morning on one occasion.
Dozens of amendments to the bill were also considered, but only a
few made it in, including one that got the GOP-controlled Senate
to say on the record that climate change is real and another two
promoting energy efficiency.

Both the House and Senate are expected to reconcile any
outstanding issues quickly, meaning that the bill could land on
Obama’s desk within days. The White House insists it will veto
construction proposals until an ongoing review process by the
State Department is completed.

For its part, TransCanada CEO Russ Girling welcomed the vote.

“It’s time to approve Keystone XL so we can transport
Canadian and American oil to fuel the everyday lives of the
American people," he said. "We look forward to a
decision by the U.S. Administration to approve the construction
of Keystone XL."

This week, we’re told that the eastern seaboard is under a
‘state of emergency’ because of a the snowfall ranging from 7.8 inches
in New York to 18-22 inches in Boston as of tonight. With all the hype, you’d think it was the Little Ice Age.

Growing
up in New England, I remember every winter being pretty much the same:
lots of snow. Believe it or not, that’s what happens in the winter time.
Sometimes it got up to 2 or 3 feet, but there was never a ‘state of
emergency’. This is the gelding of America happening right before your
eyes. Welcome to their brave new world of crisis management.

‘Weather experts’ started warning that the snow could reach ‘up totwo feet’. Wild
claims began to emerge on Monday afternoon like, “Severe weather is set
to affect 60 million people”. Meaningless numbers perhaps, but their
campaign worked: the public reacted with fear. Panic buying quickly spread
throughout the Tri-State area, with many stores completely cleaned out
of staple foods and essentials – all for a snow storm which would only
last a few days.

Emergencies and crises are coming cheaper and cheaper these days. They even gave it a name, “Juno 2015″. Wonderful occult symbology there by the way, but before you laugh, mythology is exactly what we’re dealing with here…

JUNO: NYC retailers running ‘snow day sales’ today.

Some media outlets were claiming this was “The Worst Snow Storm in History”,
which is not even remotely true (but hey, it sells papers so who really
cares, right?). Across the region, the 2006 and 2003 Storm, Blizzard of
’97, Blizzard of ’78 and the Blizzard of ’69 were much worse, according
to the National Weather Service, but not to the national
media. New England caught the brunt of this week’s snow, but while media
jesters were predicting an apocalypse in New York City, nothing
happened.

Yet, we tuned into US broadcast networks last night
and today to watch news anchors Don Lemon and Brooke Baldwin outside in
their knitted caps, pointing at tiny drifts of snow as if this is
something historic. CNN was pumping-up ‘state-wide travel bans’,
at least in New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, starting at
11:30pm. “Only emergency personnel and certain members of the media
[them] will be allowed out on the roads.”

Gore’s Odyssey: Another record-breaking freeze, still cult followers cling to climate mythologyThe
media made a big deal about how “Violating the road ban could cost you
fines of up to $300, and could lead to arrest”. We checked, and it
appears that out of all 5 nanny states declaring this faux disaster –
not one fine was given, and not one arrest was made for ‘violating emergency curfews’. It was a horrible exhibition of intimidation on the part of government officials and a compliant media. Pathetic.

Smart folks will already have figured out that this over-the-top, massive show of force has nothing at all to do with snow.
It’s simply another excuse for the media and government officials to
band together to show the feudal masses that they’ve got it all “under
control”. In other words: ‘you need us, and don’t you forget it’.

Finally, former head of FEMA, Mike Brown
became frustrated on air and challenged CNN’s Don Lemon on the media’s
role in creating a fake weather crisis, “There a difference between
giving a weather forecast and talking about, giving our prediction and
here’s what we think is going to happen, and then on the other side of
the studio when the news people start hyping it up about how bad it’s
going to be, ‘it’s going to be Armageddon’, and that gets everyone riled
up, and then people like Governor Cuomo say, ‘I’m going to tell the MTA
to shut the subways down’, yet everything I read says they didn’t
shut the subways down, they were still running empty trains… If people
would just tell the f**ing truth in these situations instead of hyping
it up, then we’d all be better off.”

Embarrassed, Don Lemon then went silent for few seconds, and then exited the segment.

It seemed that CNN’s Lemon (photo above), awarded “Worst Journalist of 2014“,
was in a hurry to tend to his next guest, and get down to doing what he
really likes doing in front of America, which is playing with puppies,
and talking about, “whether or not it’s safe for your dog to eat snow”
(seriously).

The apologies started pouring in, as various meteorologists got on to Twitter to issue retractions:

“My deepest apologies to many key decision makers and so many members of the general public,” Gary Szatkowski
of the National Weather Service. “You made a lot of tough decisions
expecting us to get it right, and we didn’t. Once again, I’m sorry.”

Despite inflating fears of a devastating“Snowmageddon”,
Juno never actually arrived. How did the media get it so wrong?
According to the weather experts, they used the wrong model”, meaning
the wrong computer model. These are the very same computer models that the UN’s IPCC rely so heavily on when they make their “scientific” predictions of devastating global warming in the future.

As our readers at 21WIRE
are well aware, the stupidest conspiracy theories these days are coming
from two places – government and the mainstream media. As the snow
began to fall on Monday, politicians were jockeying for position, taking
turns making outrageous statements in order to appear relevant, and
tough. Governors in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and
Rhode Island all declared a state of emergency. But why stop there?

The embattled NYC Mayor Bill deBlasio
saw this as an opportunity to look like a Mayor, so he scrambled a
press conference, decked out in his Sherpa outfit, proclaiming: ‘This
will be one of the largest blizzard in the history of New York City.
People must be prepared. This is not business as usual’

When de Blasio realized their was only a foot of snow, he then thrust himself back in front of the camera to claim, “We dodged a bullet!” What an idiot.

LOST: Andrew Cuomo.

New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) stood up on his podium, doing his best impression of that Aztec priest at the top of a pyramid in Mel Gibson’s Apocolypto, preaching their mythology de jour
to another helpless crowd, “You’re getting a repeat pattern of these
extreme weather situations, whether it’s Hurricane Sandy or seven feet
of snow, and that’s part of the changing climate, I believe, that has
brought this new extreme weather pattern, and it’s something we have to
adjust to, it’s something that’s very costly, and it’s also something
that’s very dangerous.”

It gets worse. Bill Finch, the Mayor of Bridgeport, CT, heaped praise upon ‘Reverend’ Al Sharpton for “fighting the good fight on climate change” on MSNBC(no comment on Frostie’s privilege, thank heavens). Finch said, “Thank you for your show, Reverend, you’ve
been fighting the good fight on climate change, and we can see the
crazy climate here, and we’d like to have a little bit more of you down
in Washington.”

Not to be outdone, President Obama took to his pulpit as well, to share his own revisionist version of the Bhagavad Gita
with the Indian masses, claiming, “With rising seas, melting Himalayan
glaciers, more unpredictable monsoons, cyclones getting stronger… The US
recognizes our part in creating this problem, so we’re leading the
global effort to combat it [climate change].”

That’s what they believe, or more accurately, that’s what they feel – which
seems to be all that’s needed for spouting pop science these days. So
we’re all meant to agree with the Governor of New York, because, well, 7
inches of snow falls in the Big Apple. He’s backed-up by members of the
media, which means we are forced to suffer disposable headlines – like
this one (one of many) by Kate Sheppard of the Huffington Post, “Is Climate Change To Blame For The Northeast Snow Storm?”

You might laugh, but they are serious. There is still a lot of money in green and yellow journalism.

Sheppard
goes on to try and stitch together the climate change mythology and 7
inches of snow in New York, saying, “Climate change deniers are gonna
deny, but there is increasing evidence that ties atmospheric warming
trends to heavier snowfall events.” In order to blog her way through it,
she offers this as her ‘evidence’:

“We can’t make too big
a deal of every single storm and say it is caused by climate change,”
climate scientist Don Wuebbles of the University of Illinois in Urbana told National Geographic on Monday. “But what we are seeing today is completely typical of what you would expect to see in a warming climate.”
That’s
why we “deny” Kate. It’s because there is no evidence that this little
snow flurry was caused by global warming, or its re-branded catch-all
term, “climate change”, and there is no evidence that this is a new, ‘extreme weather event’ either.
It’s just a foot of snow. If you are really a true believer, then you
will, while you’re at it, empty your fridge of its contents and put all
your food outside, and then unplug your fridge – so as to lower your carbon foot print.

In 2009, filmmaker Fanny Armstrong produced an expensive piece of political film called Age of Stupid.
It was groundbreaking at the time, because it pioneered the process of
crowd funding, initially raising an impressive £450,000 ($680,000). Even
more money was raised afterwards towards the production. It developed a
small cult following, not least of all because of the cult-like,
doomsday scenario depicted in the film which was cleverly pretending to
be backed-up by “irrefutable science”. Like Al Gore’s thoroughly debunked, but Oscar Award-winning ‘documentary’, An Inconvenient Truth, Armstrong’s Stupid
is an archetypal example of a propaganda film which is meant to take
place in the year 2055, in a world ravaged by the effects of global
warming – rising seas, spiced up with a little nuclear war, and a no
Amazon rainforest left (that’s actually a conservation issue, not a
climate issue, but who cares – just throw it all in the green blender).
The film was lauded by the left as a “documentary”, but at best it’s
science fiction, and at worst, it’s collectivist propaganda.

Why
did we pick this film for this discussion? Because of its title, “The
Age of Stupid”. What is more glaringly obvious now more than ever, is
how stupid climate fanatic political busy-bodies are becoming now – where every snow storm, tornado, or rainstorm is explained-away with global warming or ‘climate change’, no matter how small it is.

Some
members of the media feel it’s their duty to constantly play-up the
fear because (in their mind) they feel they are covering their asses if
God forbid, there’s any serious of loss of life. In the Blizzard of ’78
in Massachusetts, 100 died and 4,500 were injured. What about this
week’s casualties? Hardly worth a mention. Was it more dangerous back
then? Not necessarily, but we are more advanced today in terms of
communications and technology today – which means that we are generally
safer – which means we should be panicking less, not more.

A few weeks ago they also said that last year was the warmest ever, which was also a lie.
To be accurate, one could say that 2014 was 8/10 of a degree warmer
than it was 100 years ago. On its own, however, even that figure is
meaningless in the wider context – past, present and future – of this
planet’s temperature, which is almost completely determined by celestial
factors – like incoming rocks and the sun (and not SUV’s and cows). Truth be known, Global cooling is a much bigger threat to life in our Northern Hemisphere.

If
you are looking for a real demon in your midst, then look at this
photograph, taken by a satellite above the US eastern seaboard:

It would be nice if all of our ‘green journalists’ would be so brave as
to spend an equal amount of time and effort to let us know why they are
spraying chemicals and producing artificial cloud cover over the US and
parts of Europe.

Soon, you will see these same green-yellowjournalists trying to tell us
that, “Yes, there’s spraying happening, but it’s only ‘experimental’,
in order to reflect back the sunlight, and save us all from global
warming.”

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Lord Christopher Monckton believes there is climate change, but he does
not believe man has anything to do with it. Lord Monckton says science
will ultimately back up that claim. Why the recent push to do something
about climate change that is also called global warming? Lord Monckton
says, “I think they are panicking because they know that this process .
. . cannot be kept going for very much longer because . . . it’s been
25 years since the UN produces a report saying we were all doomed, and
since then, the rate of warming has been half of what they predicted and
well below their entire range of estimates.” Also, former Vice
President Al Gore predicted the polar ice caps would be melted by now.
Just the opposite has happened, as Lord Monckton points out, “If you
took the Arctic and the Antarctic together, global sea ice was the
greatest it’s been throughout the 35 years of the satellite era. It is
greater than it has ever been before.”

Lord Monckton, former
award winning journalist and Margaret Thatcher advisor, also says,
“Let’s not forget, it was Hitler who first founded the green movement
and first used the environmental movement, not for the basis for genuine
concern about the environment, but as a basis for getting control over
every detail over people lives so they couldn’t argue back. That’s what
this is really all about. . . . I get criticized all the time as to
why I don’t just stick to the science. I say somebody has to tell the
truth, not only about the science, but also about the politics.”

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Pointing to climate change and the rise of tropical diseases, British
researchers hope to sell their idea of releasing millions of
genetically modified mosquitoes in the Florida Keys. Almost 140,000
people have signed a petition against the plan.

For many years, the neighborhoods of the Florida Keys have been
sprayed with insecticides to ward off a host of bugs, including
perhaps the mother of all pests, the mosquito. Over time,
however, Aedes aegypti, a mosquito that can spread the dengue
fever, chikungunya, and yellow fever viruses has built up
resistance to many of the insecticides used to kill them.

The rising risk of a mosquito infestation and disease outbreak
presents an opportunity for one British firm, Oxitec, which has
developed a method for breeding Aedes aegypti that kills mosquito
larvae, AP reported.
According to Oxitec’s website, the process involves injecting a
“lethal gene” into either the male sperm or female egg
that eventually kills the offspring.

Change.org, the world’s largest petition platform, presented some
of the unintended consequences of releasing millions of mutant
mosquitos into the Florida Keys. For example, would the more
virulent Asian tiger mosquito, which is also a carrier of dengue,
“fill the void” left by a drop in Aedes aegypti
populations? Or will the dengue virus mutate and become even more
deadly?

The group calls efforts to introduce genetically modified
mosquitos a “radical approach” since dengue fever has
been absent from Key West since 2010. The group says this
“indicates the current methods of control and public
education are working.”

Oxitec says only non-biting male mosquitoes would be released,
while attempting to assure the public that no genetically
modified DNA would enter the bloodstream in the event of a bite
from an overlooked female specimen.

Experts, however, question the claims.

"I think the science is fine, they definitely can kill
mosquitoes, but the GMO issue still sticks as something of a
thorny issue for the general public," Phil Lounibos, a
researcher at the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory, told AP.

"I'm on their side, in that consequences are highly unlikely.
But to say that there's no genetically modified DNA that might
get into a human, that's kind of a gray matter."

Oxitec spokeswoman Chris Creese said the experiment will be
similar in size to one held in 2012 in the Cayman Islands, where
3.3 million genetically modified mosquitoes were set loose over a
six- month period, resulting in the elimination of 96 percent of
the targeted insects, AP quoted.

Critics say the British firm failed to notify residents about the
possibility of being bitten by a few females overlooked by the
researchers.

As more people question anything genetically modified, especially
something that has the potential to suck their blood, resistance
to the idea is growing. Already, almost 140,000 people have
signed a Change.org petition to halt the experiment.

FDA spokeswoman Theresa Eisenman said no experiments with the
modified bugs will be permitted until the agency has
"thoroughly reviewed all the necessary information."

Marilyn Smith, a Florida Keys resident, wasn't sold on the plan
following Oxitec's presentation at a public meeting. Smith asked
"why are we being used as the experiment, the guinea pigs,
just to see what happens,"AP quoted her as saying.

Oxitec has a laboratory in Marathon, a Key West town of just over
10,000 people, and hopes to start releasing mosquitoes in the Key
West region this spring.

Monday, January 26, 2015

"Flanked by a lush, dark-green eruption of chard and fava beans at a tiny eighth-of-an-acre garden plot in Berkeley, Altieri scribbles numbers on a notepad, producing some compelling calculations: Applying agroecology methods on 1200 acres of public lands, the city of Oakland could produce 25,000 tons of food annually—enough to feed at least 400,000 people—without any pesticides or genetically engineered “super plants.” Such a change would be huge, Altieri argues, since the Bay Area imports 6,000 tons of food each day, which lean heavily on fossil fuel. But for a host of reasons, it’s not likely, he says."

In the fall of 1989, a full quarter-century before President Obama
normalized US relations with Cuba, the Berlin Wall came tumbling to the
ground in a flurry of sledgehammers and concrete dust. Meanwhile, an
economic tsunami was brewing on the small Caribbean island. The Soviet
Bloc was crumbling fast, sending shock waves across the globe that would
plunge Cuba’s food and farming into years of austerity, hunger, and
radical overhaul.

Earlier that year, the international socialist
market terminated Cuba’s favorable trade rates—abruptly curtailing 85
percent of the tiny nation’s trade. Imports of wheat and other grains
dropped by more than half; food rationing set in, and hunger widened.
Soviet aid, a pillar of Cuba’s economy, evaporated as U.S. economic
sanctions tightened.

Economic collapse led swiftly to agricultural
crisis. Cuba’s industrialized farming system, fueled, literally, by
Soviet tractors and petrochemicals, ground to a halt. Oil imports fell
by 53 percent, and the supply of pesticides and fertilizers fell by 80
percent. Launching an era of austerity and
reform known as the “Special Period in Time of Peace,” the Castro
government “instituted drastic measures such as planned blackouts, the
use of bicycles for mass transportation, and the use of animals in the
place of tractors” to meet the unfolding crisis, according to a report
by Food First, a U.S.-based think tank focused on food justice issues.

An asteroid the size five football fields is approaching Earth and is
expected to pass by on Monday. It will be visible through strong
binoculars – definitely worth getting; the next time such an asteroid
could be this close again will be in 2027.

At the closest point to the Earth, asteroid 2004 BL86 will be at
a distance of 1.2 million kilometers which – approximately three
times the distance from the Earth to the moon. Estimated to be
0.5 km in diameter, it is classified by scientists as potentially
dangerous.

A space object is considered “potentially dangerous” if
it crosses the Earth's orbit at a distance of less than 0.05 AU
(approximately 19.5 distances from the Earth to the Moon), and if
its diameter exceeds 100-150 meters. Objects of this size are
large enough to cause unprecedented destruction, or generate a
tsunami in case they fall into the ocean.

However, according to astronomers, there is no threat of the
object colliding with our planet this time.

“While it poses no threat to Earth for the foreseeable
future, it’s a relatively close approach by a relatively large
asteroid, so it provides us a unique opportunity to observe and
learn more,” Don Yeomans from NASA's Near Earth Object
Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement.

It is very rare that such a huge space body comes this close to
Earth. The next time an asteroid might be passing by will be in
2027, when 1999 AN10 flies past Earth. As for 2004 BL86 itself,
it can be monitored from Earth for another 200 years.

Astronomers strongly recommend trying to catch this unique
opportunity to spot an asteroid in the sky. It will be possible
on January 26 between 11:07 pm and 11:52 pm ET (04:07 and 04:52
GMT).

It will be best seen in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Amateur
astronomers will be able to observe it with small telescopes and
even strong binoculars.

“I may grab my favorite binoculars and give it a shot
myself,” Yeomans said in the statement. “Asteroids are
something special. Not only did asteroids provide Earth with the
building blocks of life and much of its water, but in the future,
they will become valuable resources for mineral ores and other
vital natural resources.”

Numerous observatories all over the world will use this
opportunity to learn something new about 2004 BL86. NASA's Deep
Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, and the Arecibo
Observatory in Puerto Rico will try to procure scientific data
and radar-generated images of the asteroid while it is in its
closest position to the Earth.

“When we get our radar data back the day after the flyby, we
will have the first detailed images,” radar astronomer Lance
Benne said. “At present, we know almost nothing about the
asteroid, so there are bound to be surprises.”

2004 BL86 was discovered on January 30, 2004, by the Lincoln
Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR), responsible for the
majority of asteroid discoveries from 1998 until 2005, when it
was overtaken by the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS). The asteroid
orbits the Sun every 1.84 years.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Dept. of Energy, Jan 21, 2015 (emphasis added): Roof Separation
Highlights Bolting Priority — January 15 [we] discovered that a portion
of the ceiling in the Panel 3 access drift had fallen… The roof fall…
was estimated to be approximately 8’ long by 8’wide and 24” thick… no
WIPP personnel were present at the time of the fall. The area where the
fall occurred is also known to contain low levels of radioactive
contamination… WIPP geotechnical inspections conducted in November 2014
identified seven areas… where access was restricted due to significant
bolt loss… The area where the roof fall occurred was one of the seven
locations…

Nearly 3 million gallons of saltwater and an as yet unknown amount of
crude oil have leaked from a northwest North Dakota pipeline into a
creek that feeds into the Missouri River. Officials have called the leak
the largest of its kind in state history.

The leak in the 4-inch saltwater collection line, owned by Summit
Midstream Partners LP and operated by subsidiary Meadowlark
Midstream Co., was discovered earlier this month and was reported
to the state on January 7, according to Reuters.

The pipeline, about 15 miles north of Williston, will be out of
commission for an undetermined amount of time, Summit said.

Although Williston residents receive drinking water that comes
from the Missouri River, the leak does not threaten supplies,
according to the North Dakota Department of Health. However, the
city has the ability to shut off collection valves to avoid
harmful water, Reuters reported.

Yet some of the brine made it to the Missouri River, the
Williston Herald
reported, and the state found "high readings" of
contamination at the confluence of the Little Muddy and Missouri
Rivers southeast of Williston, according to Karl Rockeman, the
director of water quality at the Department of Health.

Williston sits in the middle of North Dakota’s oil boom, and the
saltwater is said to be a byproduct of hydraulic fracturing, or
fracking.

To unleash oil or natural gas, fracking requires blasting large
volumes of highly pressurized water, sand, and other chemicals
into layers of rock. The contents of fracking fluid include
chemicals that the energy industry and many government officials
will not name, yet they insist the chemicals do not endanger
human health, contradicting findings
by scientists and environmentalists. Once used, toxic fracking
wastewater is then either stored in deep underground wells,
disposed of in open pits for evaporation, sprayed into waste
fields or used over again.

Summit is working with the state to find the cause of the spill
before it repairs the saltwater line, spokesman Jonathan Morgan
said.

Monitored by the state's Department of Health, Summit has sent
environmental contractors to address the spill, though cleanup
will be more difficult given the ice covering much of the area.

Reuters reported that about 2 million gallons of water has been
taken from the affected streams, yet it is unclear if that amount
was mostly saltwater or the creeks’ normal water.

The North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources is inspecting
Summit’s pipeline network, according to officials, which mostly
transports natural gas.

Summit recently announced it had agreed with an ExxonMobil
subsidiary, XTO Energy, to develop a 'natural gas
gathering system' in southeastern Ohio’s Utica Shale. XTO was
fined in 2013 for
spilling 50,000 gallons of fracking wastewater into
Pennsylvania waterways.

Summit also operates in North Dakota’s Bakken shale, where the
current leak is located, and the DJ Niobrara Shale in Colorado.

The Bakken region has seen other chemical accidents, including
train derailments,
amid the area’s energy boom. In McKenzie County, a blown-out well
leaked a massive amount of fracking wastewater in
February 2014. Other states, including
California and
Colorado, have struggled to adequately address safe
wastewater storage.

Disposal of fracking wastewater is underregulated, according to
Hannah Wiseman, a law professor at Florida State University.

“A typical well can spit about 1,000 gallons a day,”
Wiseman told
Marketplace. “Some of the water is recycled back into
fracking, stored in pits or used to de-ice roads. It’s also
injected deep underground, which has been known to cause
earthquakes.”

In October, a report was released that detailed
how a number of US oil companies are taking advantage of the
so-called “Halliburton Loophole” to circumvent federal
legislation regulating diesel-based fluids in fracking, to dump
even more toxic chemicals into the environment.

Meanwhile, the cleanup
continues in Montana, where a breached oil pipeline spilled
as many as 50,000 gallons of crude oil in and around the
Yellowstone River last week, threatening drinking water in the
Glendive area.

Friday, January 23, 2015

“If the government and the Kansas
Corporation Commission care about the people of Kansas and the damages,
they will order a moratorium,” exclaims Joe Spease,
chairman of the Kansas Sierra Club's fracking committee following a
report from Kansas officials, who have been reluctant to link the
mysterious earthquakes in south central Kansas to fracking, admitted
last week that "we can say there is a strong correlation between the disposal of saltwater and the earthquakes."

As LJWorld reports,it's
the first time state officials have so clearly stated the likely cause
of the earthquakes, which are afflicting a region where fracking is
widely used, as Rick Miller, a geophysicist and senior
scientist for the Kansas Geological Survey, said he believes the
injection of fracking chemicals into the earth has been a catalyst for
the quakes.

During hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” for short, operators use a
mixture of saltwater and chemicals to break tight underground rock
formations to release oil and gas. To get rid of the water after the
fracking process, operators inject the water deep into disposal wells.

Naming the cause of the earthquakes is, in part, a matter of semantics.
Questions have long been raised about whether fracking activity is
causing the earthquakes, and officials in other states have concluded
that it has. But Kansas officials consider the waste water disposal a
separate process, and so have not considered the fracking itself to be
the key factor in the quakes.

At issue now is what, if any, action to take. The
state’s Sierra Club chapter wants Kansas to follow in the steps of New
York, New Hampshire, Maryland and numerous local governments nationwide
and call a moratorium on fracking. Others, including Lawrence Rep. Tom
Sloan, ask where the nation will get energy if the option is off limits.

...

“He is not being sincere,” said Joe Spease, chairman
of the Kansas Sierra Club's fracking committee and owner of a renewable
energy company in Overland Park.

“It is so ridiculous, this issue of semantics,” Spease said. “There are millions of dollars in property damages happening, and we have our scientists playing word games.”

The Kansas Sierra Club supports a bill, not yet introduced, to impose
a moratorium on fracking to give the oil and gas industry time to
develop a solution to the saltwater disposal issue, Spease said.

“If the government and the Kansas Corporation Commission care
about the people of Kansas and the damages, they will order a
moratorium,” Spease said. “If they only care about the profits
of the oil and gas (industry), it will be business as usual. I hope that
is not the case.”

According to a team of scientists working under Duke University geochemistry professor Avner Vengosh, wastewater
associated with fracking sites contains large amounts of ammonium and
iodide, which may in turn encourage the formation of certain
carcinogenic byproducts.

“We were not aware that they existed in oil and gas waste products,” Vengosh told ThinkProgress. “Until now, no one was aware — no one was monitoring for those contaminants.”

“The relatively high frequency of spills associated with the
intensity of shale gas development and reports of an overall increase of
the salinity in watersheds associated with hydraulic fracturing
activities, combined with data presented in this study, suggest that the
release of [oil and gas wastewater] to the environment is one of the
major risks associated with the development of hydraulic fracturing,”
the study reads. “Our findings indicate that discharge and
accidental spills of [oil and gas wastewater] to waterways pose risks to
both human health and the environment.”

As RT reported previously, a separate study published earlier
this month determined that fracking in an Ohio community caused 77
earthquakes during a span of just a few days last March.

Ironically, two days after the paper published its report, four small
quakes occurred in the southern part of the state and through
neighboring Oklahoma.

California officials are unable to identify a grey, goo-like
substance that has been found coating the feathers of hundreds of birds.
More than 200 seabirds have been found dead along the coast, while more
than 300 have been rescued so far.

The strange, gooey substance degrades the water-repellent
properties in the birds’ feathers, causing hypothermia from
extended stays in the water.

The seabirds – Surf Scoters, Buffleheads, Goldeneyes, and Horned
Grebes – have been turning up dead or in need of rescue along 20
miles of coastline in the San Francisco Bay area over the past
week. If they react quickly, rescuers can treat the birds for
hypothermia and then wash off the goo with baking soda, vinegar
and a chemical agent, then soap and water. Others are not so
fortunate.

“The birds tend to come into care needing hydration and
medical stabilization, and we have a mandatory 24-hour
stabilization process before cleaning,” spokeswoman Barbara
Callahan of International Bird Rescue told CNN.

Officials know the gooey substance is not oil because it would be
far harder to treat, and officials think whatever the substance
is, it was probably dumped.

“It’s some material that we nor the wildlife center has ever
seen before,” Andrew Hughan, a spokesman for the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the Los Angeles Times.
“It’s a real mystery.”

Hughan said the material
is not a public health hazard; the birds died because they froze
to death from loss of body heat – not because they were
poisoned.

“The birds tend to come into care needing hydration and
medical stabilization, and we have a mandatory 24-hour
stabilization process before cleaning,” spokeswoman Barbara
Callahan of International Bird Rescue told CNN.

Officials know the gooey substance is not oil because it would be
far harder to treat, and officials think whatever the substance
is, it was probably dumped.

“It’s some material that we nor the wildlife center has ever
seen before,” Andrew Hughan, a spokesman for the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the Los Angeles Times.
“It’s a real mystery.”

Workers at International Bird Rescue have spent the week cleaning
and reviving the birds affected.

“Just like if it were an oil spill, it degrades their
waterproofing,” Callahan told AP. “They’re all seabirds; they live on
top of the water all year long. So as soon as they find that
their waterproofing has been breached, they put themselves on the
beach.”

She said the rescue effort has cost the center some $8,000 a day.

“Nobody’s paying because they don’t know what it is and they
don’t have a responsible party. We’re footing the bill on our
own,” Callahan said.

There have been no reports or evidence of an oil spill. Tests are
being conducted to try to identify what the substance is and
where it might have come from.

Initial thoughts were that the substance might be similar to the
synthetic rubber fuel additive polyisobutylene (PBI), which was
found to have led to the deaths of 4,000 seabirds in England in
2013. But officials said tests have ruled PBI out.

Impressive new images of the dwarf planet Ceres, captured by NASA’s
Dawn spacecraft, have revealed crater-like structures on the frozen, icy
surface. The images arrived as the probe became due to enter Ceres’
orbit.

The images will help the Dawn spacecraft as it navigates its way
towards Ceres. It is scheduled to enter the dwarf planet’s orbit
around March 6 to begin a 16-month study.

Dawn’s arrival at Ceres will mark the first time a spacecraft has
visited the planet, and the probe will able to linger in its
orbit for in-depth exploration. NASA’s interest in the planet is
that its surface contains vast portions of ice, and the agency
has previously detected water vapor – a potential signal that
Ceres may harbor life.

“We know so much about the solar system and yet so little
about … Ceres. Now, Dawn is about to change that,” Mark
Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer and mission director, said in a
release from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“Ceres apparently formed far enough from the sun under
conditions cool enough for it to hang on to water molecules.
Indeed, scientists have good reason to believe that water (mostly
in the form of ice) may make up an astonishing 30 percent of its
mass. Ceres may contain more water than Mars or any other body in
the inner solar system except Earth,” Rayman wrote in his NASA dawnblog.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

One of the least likely places you might think astronomers would learn
about ancient supernovae is at the bottom of the ocean, but in new
research scientists have done just that.

Through the careful analysis of ocean sediment, tiny particles that
originated from deep space have settled on the seabed, locking the
chemical secrets to supernova processes that would have otherwise
remained a mystery.

"Small amounts of debris from these distant explosions fall on the earth
as it travels through the galaxy," said lead researcher Anton Wallner,
of the Australian National University.

"We've analyzed galactic dust from the last 25 million years that has
settled on the ocean and found there is much less of the heavy elements
such as plutonium and uranium than we expected."

Supernovae are powerful explosions triggered when massive stars reach
the ends of their lives. During these powerful events, many elements are
forged, including elements that are essential for life to thrive -
such as iron, potassium and iodine.

However, as pointed out by an Australian National University press release,
even heavier elements like lead, gold and radioactive elements like
uranium and plutonium can be created. But it appears that the formation
processes for the heaviest elements are at odds with current
astrophysical theory.

Wallner and his team studied samples of sediment from the bottom
of a stable area at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But when measuring
the quantities of plutonium-244, a radioisotope that is produced by
supernovae, they found something strange in their results - there was
100 time less plutonium-244 than predicted.

Plutonium-244 has a half-life of 81 million years, making it an
excellent indicator of the number of supernovae that have exploded
nearby in recent galactic history. "So any plutonium-244 that we
find on earth must have been created in explosive events that have
occurred more recently, in the last few hundred million years," said Wallner.

But the fact that there is less recent deposition of the heaviest of
elements, despite the fact that we know supernovae have erupted nearby,
suggests a different formation mechanism may be responsible for
plutonium-244 and elements like it.

"It seems that these heaviest elements may not be formed in standard supernovae after all," concludes Wallner. "It may require rarer and more explosive events such as the merging of two neutron stars to make them."

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

University researchers have discovered two new pollutants in fracking
wastewater that can have potentially devastating effects on waterways
and those who depend on them. Professor Avner Vengosh identified both
ammonium and iodide in samples taken by his team, which says that the
two chemicals have never before been linked to the natural gas
extraction process. Although not deadly by themselves, according to
scientists, when combined with other substances used by the natural gas
drilling industry, they become carcinogenic. Dr. Ken Carlson of Colorado
State University explains the importance and of the findings to RT’s
Ben Swann.

In 2013, NASA decided to take time out from creating spectacularly
useless climate models, and reactivated their Near-Earth Object
Wide-field Survey Explorer programme. The result is moderately
terrifying – 8 previously unknown near Earth asteroids with catastrophic
impact potential have been discovered, along with a host of smaller
bodies which have the potential to wipe out a city.

The JPL website contains more information about the discoveries of various space survey projects;

“WISE was launched into a low-Earth orbit in December
2009, and surveyed the full sky in four infrared wavelength bands (3.4,
4.6, 12 and 22 µm) with a 40 cm (16 in) diameter infrared telescope
until the frozen hydrogen cooling the telescope was depleted in
September 2010. Throughout this time, NEOWISE searched the WISE data for
moving objects. Starting in October 2010, the mission was renamed
NEOWISE, and the survey continued for an additional four months using
the two shortest wavelength detectors. The spacecraft was placed into
hibernation in February 2011, after completing its search of the inner
solar system.

Recently, NEOWISE has been brought out of hibernation to learn more
about the population of near-Earth objects and comets that could pose an
impact hazard to the Earth. A three-year survey in the 3.4 and 4.6 µm
infrared bands began in December 2013 in which NEOWISE will rapidly
characterize near-Earth objects (NEOs) and obtain accurate measurements
of their diameters and albedos (how much light an object reflects).
NEOWISE is equally sensitive to both light-colored asteroids and the
optically dark objects that are difficult for ground-based observers to
discover and characterize. Just six days after the restart of the
survey, NEOWISE discovered its first potentially hazardous near-Earth
asteroid, 2013 YP139.http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/programs/neowise.html

YP139 has a “H” value of 21.6, which corresponds to a possible diameter of 130 – 300 metres.

To put this into perspective, the Chelyabinsk meteor which caused a
500 kiloton explosion over Russia in 2013 was estimated to be around 20
metres in diameter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
A 300 metre object has the potential to cause (300 ^ 3 / 20 ^ 3) * 500
kilotons = 1.6 Gigaton explosion. An explosion of this magnitude,
especially an ocean strike, could create gigantic Tsunamis, and would
severely disrupt the global climate for several years, possibly longer.

Its nice to know that NASA occasionally takes a break from climate
bothering, long enough to do something space related, but I’m mildly
horrified that a project this important appears to be so far down the
list of priorities, that the project was mothballed for a year while the
survey satellite stood waiting for a refuel. Granted that a major
Asteroid strike is a low probability event, but the consequences are
potentially catastrophic – a big ocean strike could kill millions, maybe
even billions of people.

As the Chelyabinsk wakeup call demonstrated, the risk of a damaging meteor impact is not a possibility which should be neglected.

Monday, January 19, 2015

As radioactive pollution continues to accumulate throughout the
environment as a result of nuclear incidents like Fukushima, the U.S.
government's response is not to try to mitigate this threat to public
health but rather to increase the official maximum exposure levels and
basically redefine how much radiation is considered safe.

The
Obama Administration recently did this with regard to radiation in
drinking water, dramatically increasing allowable levels in response to
"radiological incidents" that make it impossible to keep radiation
levels below the previously established thresholds. So, the new approach
is to continually raise these thresholds so that water can be
considered safe.

It isn't, of course, but that's the illusion
that the American plutocracy would have us all accept as reality -- or
what the nuclear industry describes as the "new normal," according to
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The goal is to
maintain the ruse for as long as possible, or until so many people are
ill and dying of cancer that nothing can be done to stop this runaway
train.

According to a press release from PEER, the White House's
decision to allow the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to alter its
official radiation guides, known as Protective Action Guides (PAGs),
make radiation cleanup mandates more lax than they have ever been in the
history of the agency's existence.

"In soil, the PAGs allow
long-term public exposure to radiation in amounts as high as 2,000
millirems," explains the press release. "This would, in effect, increase
a longstanding 1 in 10,000 person cancer rate to a rate of 1 in 23
persons exposed over a 30-year period."

Allowable levels of radiation in drinking water are basically undefined at this point

For drinking water, the requirements are even more obscured. According
to the same report, the EPA's new standard is undefined in this regard
as the agency "continues to seek input." But the gist of it allows for
indeterminable "flexibility" in discarding the previously established
limits for drinking water and basically allowing whatever radiation is present in water to be considered "safe."

There's
obviously nothing scientific about this "new normal" policy, but most
of the "sheeple" probably won't even take a second look at it. PEER
Executive Director Jeff Ruch said it right when he told some in the
media that the Obama Sdministration's new guidelines are something that "only Dr. Strangelove could embrace."

"If
this typifies the environmental leadership we can expect from Ms.
McCarthy," he stated, referring to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy,
"then [the] EPA is in for a long, dirty slog. No compelling
justification is offered for increasing the cancer deaths of Americans
innocently exposed to corporate miscalculations several hundred-fold."

Interestingly,
the guidelines in the new PAGs for how to handle "radiological
emergencies," which include evacuations, shelter-in-place orders, food
restrictions and other actions, seem to fit the bill for what the world
currently faces with Fukushima. Radiation releases from the shuttered
plant are still so high that a Japanese government official recently
reported that there is no other option but to continue dumping
contaminated releases into the ocean.

This tainted ocean water
will obviously continue circulating around the world, polluting ocean
life, soils, and other ecosystems encountered by humans. And this will
result in even higher levels of radiation for which the EPA will have to cover up the truth and pretend as though everything is just fine.

"We
have to dispose of the water," stated Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the
Nuclear Regulation Authority in Japan, in a public comment after
expressing that he was "overwhelmed" by the number of tanks holding
radioactive water.

Healthesound.info

ShelterSense.info provides Independent News in blog format to assist other activists, teachers, and elders with alternative news, information on social issues, and research material.

FAIR USE NOTICE: ShelterSense.info (website) may post copyrighted material not specifically authorized in accordance with Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law allowing purposes associating learning processes. Please be advised if you intend to use such copyrighted material for personal reasons beyond "fair use," considerations, please obtain permission from the copyright owner. Learning processes encompass a vast array of issues of concern and would not be restrictive, it would offer critique and extended scholarly research.

Website may display third party authors/advertising which may not represent the views or opinions of Website or contributors. Advertisements are not endorsed as such and are intended as alternative ways to support the work at Website.